It’s been just over a year since Intel’s 8th-generation Coffee Lake processors (CPU) got low-powered T-Series variants. Now, with the Intel Coffee Lake Refresh in full swing, it makes sense to expect low-power versions. Intel is readying new 9th Generation Core processors with just 35W designs for desktop platforms. The new processors are scheduled to launch on 15th of May and would be arriving in 7 Core and 2 Pentium flavors.
Intel’s 9000-series processors with the “T” suffix are identical to their standard counterparts in terms of core count and cache size, and they are still manufactured with Intel’s Coffee Lake microarchitecture and 14nm++ node. However, the biggest differentiator between the T-series and standard processors boils down to optimizations for lower power consumption. As a result, T-series chips operate at lower clock speeds and adhere to the 35W TDP (thermal design power) envelope, which makes them ideal for deployment in small form factor (SFF) systems.
Since Intel hasn’t officially announced them, there is still room for tweaking the operating clock speeds.
CPU Model | Cores / Threads | Base Frequency | Boost Frequency | Cache | TDP |
Core i9-9900T | 8 / 16 | 2.1 GHz | 4.4 GHz | 16MB | 35W |
Core i7-9700T | 8 / 8 | 2 GHz | 4.3 GHz | 12MB | 35W |
Core i5-9600T | 6 / 6 | 2.3 GHz | 3.9 GHz | 9MB | 35W |
Core i5-9500T | 6 / 6 | 2.2 GHz | 3.7 GHz | 9MB | 35W |
Core i5-9400T | 6 / 6 | 1.8 GHz | 3.4 GHz | 9MB | 35W |
Core i3-9300T | 4 / 4 | 3.2 GHz | ? | 6MB | 35W |
Core i3-9100T | 4 / 4 | 3.1 GHz | 3.7 GHz | 6MB | 35W |
Pentium Gold G5600T | 2 / 4 | 3.3 GHz | ? | 4MB | 35W |
Pentium Gold G5420T | 2 / 4 | 3.2 GHz | ? | 4MB | 35W |
Celeron G4930T | 2 / 2 | 3 GHz | ? | 2MB | 35W |
The top model of the lineup would be the Core i9-9900T which is an 8 core, 16 thread part with 16 MB of L3 cache. The chip will operate at a base frequency of 2.1 GHz and given the 35W TDP, the boost clocks would be also very conservative around the 3 GHz range. The rest of the lineup is also very similarly clocked with the Core i5-9400T, a 6 core and 6 thread part featuring the lowest base clock of 1.8 GHz.
Now the way Intel handles TDP is based upon the base frequency of their processors so the CPU would always be reaching higher TDPs since the boost higher than their default TDPs. Now based on OEMs, they have the flexibility to fine-tune the TDP numbers for their solutions but for users who want the best performance, the TDP is always going to be beyond 35W for them.